Is There Life After Football?

by James A. Holstein

  Scarce Social Support

  When Anderson Smith left the game, he not only lost the structure of his life, he lost an important source of encouragement and sustenance that might have eased his transition out of football. As he puts it, “When you are out there on that [retirement] island, there is no support system for you.”11 George Koonce relates a similar experience:

  I found myself alone for the first time in my life. I’d always had the support of my teammates, my friends, my family. But that just disappeared. Leaving football is like getting a divorce. You’re separated from the life and the people you knew. It’s all behind you now. Or maybe even like death, the loss is so complete. I tried to reach out to my former teammates, but it’s just not the same.12

  Not only does the end of NFL careers deprive players of the basic structures of their lives, it robs them of many of their closest relationships. Players lived life in the bubble to the fullest, but almost exclusively in the company of teammates and others connected to the NFL. Stripped of that life, former players sometimes have no one to fall back on. When the free tickets and the parties run out, so do the friends and hangers-on. When the paydays stop and the there’s no money to loan, distant relatives keep their distance. When the investment capital is gone, so are the financial “partners.” Koonce recalls how others abandoned ship when he lost his job:

  Everybody seemed to disappear. Your agent’s gone. I talked to that guy once, twice a day for years, and suddenly he can’t return my calls. . . . My family didn’t know what to do with me. My Mom was thinking, “What’s going on here? Is he all done?” My sisters—a bad business deal went down and they are gone. They may be at Mom’s house when I go there, but I don’t have a relationship anymore. Your uncles, all that, that’s gone.13

  Even football friends and teammates slip away. Like Koonce, Anderson Smith found himself virtually on his own when he “retired.”

  I went through a very lonely time, without having anyone to talk with. Your friends are going on with their season, so a lot of guys don’t really understand where you’re coming from. . . . A lot of the friends that you had in college already have a career started and they are doing [their thing].14

  It’s nice to have the formal retirement resources of the NFL and the NFLA to help establish new directions in life after football. But programs and workshops can’t replace the people who’ve disappeared from the scene.

  Fellow players would seem to be the most obvious source of social support, but as Smith intimates, a significant gap emerges between men who may have been virtually inseparable for years. Koonce explains the distance.

  Why wouldn’t I just call some old playing buddies, or maybe somebody who’s been out of the league for a few years? Well, a player just doesn’t call another player when he’s been cut. He’s embarrassed and vulnerable. Up ’til then, the player had been the best . . . a warrior, a hero, a victor. Now what is he? He’s a failure, a has-been. He doesn’t want people to think he’s weak. So, he keeps it all to himself.15

  All players fear the end, but they also refuse to believe that it will happen to them—at least not until they’re ready. The last thing they want is a reminder of their vulnerability staring them in the face. When the end comes for someone else, players feel sympathy and compassion for the other guy. They know that he’s suffering. They care about their friend and compatriot. But they also know that, sooner or later, they will walk in those shoes and they steel themselves against the prospect. Denial overpowers empathy. So, when a player is cut, he knows what his former teammates are thinking and feeling. He feels as though he’s lost nearly everything, and he doesn’t want to lose what little remains of his self-respect and the regard of others. So he won’t allow himself to suffer in public, or seek the solace of guys in the locker room. He knows that they have compassion, but he also knows their instinct for self-preservation is going to erect protective barriers. Having lived through both sides of the situation, George Koonce remembers: “When you’ve been released, it’s like you have a disease, some kind of infection. Everyone else is afraid it’s contagious. They avoid you like the plague. Players worry that they might get cut just for hanging out with you.”16

  Domestic Distress

  In most respects, NFL marriages are as solid. According to the NFL Player Care study, in contrast to popular belief, retired NFL players are no more likely than the general population to be widowed or divorced. In fact, they are more likely to be currently married (over 75 percent) than comparable men in the general population. Less than 15 percent of NFL marriages end within five years of retirement.17 Nevertheless, players encounter a unique set of domestic challenges that may be especially onerous because family is expected to be a solution, not the problem. It’s supposed to be a refuge from the trials and tribulations of everyday life—a “haven in a heartless world.”18 But often it’s a mixed blessing, and sometimes players end up “twice divorced”—from both the NFL and their wives and families.

  One source of difficulty is the fundamental structure of many NFL marriages. Out of practical necessity, many players’ marriages are “one-sided.” Indeed, they may be one of the last bastions of the traditional gendered division of household labor.19 Due to their round-the-clock, full-time commitment to football, players aren’t around the house very much; they’re drive-by husbands and fathers. Their primary contribution to the household is financial. In return, they ask their wives to manage the household and hold down the fort socially and emotionally. Wives put their own lives on hold to help players devote their full attention to the game. Taking care of the player—managing nearly every detail of his life—often becomes an NFL wife’s full-time job. Few wives maintain their own careers outside the home.20

  As a result, wives identify so thoroughly with their NFL husbands that their own lives are completely entwined with their husbands’ NFL role, status, and fate. When he’s out of the league, they, too, are cut off from a life to which they have become deeply accustomed and attached. Their routines and rituals—the structures of their days and years—are disrupted just like his. So are their identities and emotions. Player wives live in a bubble of their own, and it bursts for them, just as it does for ex-players. That makes being supportive a difficult task.21

  NFL wives have their own aspirations for life after football, expectations that sometimes conflict with players’ needs. While most players’ wives don’t eagerly anticipate retirement, they typically think it will bring a much-needed equilibrium to their marriages. Many are glad to be done with the stress of game day and have had their fill of being the weekend activity director for out-of-town friends who’ve come for the game. They look forward to not worrying about football groupies hounding their husbands. Wives may even plan new post-career possibilities for themselves and their marriages, expecting husbands to be more attentive to family matters and help out more around the house. Most hope their husbands’ health will improve without the weekly injuries.22 One player’s wife explains: “He’s worked so hard for so long. Let him have his time [when he retires] to rest and golf. Then it will be my turn to be out there, and he will be the one taking the kids to practice, volunteering, and doing homework.”23 But when that moment finally arrives, players and wives may be on decidedly different pages of the new script.

  Retirement typically introduces new household dynamics to players’ lives, with realigned family organization replacing the everyday structure of life in the bubble. Recalls Kim Singletary, wife of former All-Pro Mike Singletary, “[After retirement] I started saying, look, I have needs. I have interests. I have desires. I am not saying it’s all about me, but I am saying it’s going to be like 50/50 here, you know. Not all you.”24 Players typically haven’t spent much time around the house during their playing days, and, according to their wives, they may not be fully “there” when they are home. They haven’t been responsible for many household chores, and were minimally involved with childcare. After retirement, wives often demand that players do
their fair share around the house—something a temporarily shamed and emotionally vulnerable player may resent. Players find out that being a good father requires more than simply hugging the kids on the field after a winning game. Being a good husband means more than bringing home a paycheck. Providing support, rather than receiving it, is a new and difficult role.

  Kim Singletary says it took about five years to adjust her marriage: “We all had to retrain his energy. I really had to train him to see me, see a different side of me, see my gifts, see my talents. He had just been so used to looking at everything from his perspective.”25 And this all took place at a time when her husband was going through his football withdrawal. Everything he’d always done and been was now up in the air, at the same time that pressures mounted at home to get with a new program. If former players are being retrained, it’s often reluctantly, if not against their will.

  In some instances, however, players are eager to jump headlong into family life, even though they’ve merely been drive-by husbands and fathers for years. But that can cause trouble, too, because they may not be fully welcome in this new role. A wife of a former NFL player offers the following observations about her husband and other NFL players’ reemergence as family men:

  This is my turf. Who are you? You have not been here for how many months, and you want to tell somebody WHAT? The guys came back and they really didn’t know how to act. They didn’t know the family’s customs. They didn’t know the language. They weren’t familiar with the slang. They were total foreigners. My husband would come back into the home and think he had an established position, but he really didn’t, because he was never really there to establish it all those other months.26

  When players retire, it may be the first time in years the couple is actually spending time together. Some NFL wives describe that first year as “unbearable.” “He would not get off the couch and he was always in a bad mood,” recalls one ex-player’s wife. “He didn’t go to any of his former team’s games—not that they ever invited him. To this day, he doesn’t watch any football on TV. Maybe it’s terrible to say, but I was done being supportive. I was sick of it.”27

  This may be the gist of the family’s failure to provide a haven in a heartless world. Whereas ex-players may expect their wives to support and comfort them when they’re dismissed from the game, that backing and encouragement is suddenly problematic. Perhaps for the first time in players’ adult lives, others around them aren’t knocking themselves out to make former players feel special, to keep their lives perfectly on track.

  But post-football life has its emotional trials for players’ wives, too. Many of them are as unprepared for the end as their husbands. They deny that their lifestyles might change. In the same boat as retiring players, some wives are shocked when the money stops flowing in and the spending needs to stop. Says the wife of a former player:

  I never knew that I liked the limelight, but whenever my husband and I went out, we never had to wait on a table, and we never had to wait in line for anything. Now, sometimes we have to wait. Well, if I have to stand in a line, I won’t go. You get used to a certain way of living. When your husband retires, you are a commoner, and you miss the perks.28

  Lost Camaraderie

  I’d say the thing [retired players] miss the most is the camaraderie. That’s the thing guys talk about most. Not being a part of the team. They miss the locker room. They were a part of an elite group of guys . . . and a lot of those guys miss the conversation, miss the time being among their fellow teammates.29

  It’s not the money or the glory; it’s the loss of the team atmosphere that hurts the most. Not being able to “hang with the boys” has profound consequences.

  Part of what former players miss is the shared experience and the knowledge that everyone went through the same thing together, regardless of when or where they played. Will Siegel echoes Koonce’s observations, stressing the complete acceptance by his teammates:

  It’s not just me. All the guys feel this way. I was fortunate to play for ten years. It was unbelievable. . . . But [the best thing] is the relationships you make. . . . It’s like being in the Marines. You are immediately accepted when you come back. It’s just like you have never gone. They are just acceptive, because all of us know what each individual had to do to be in that group in that period of time.30

  Many players compare their relationships to the bonds that are literally forged in combat and are hard to duplicate when the battle’s over. As one retiree puts it, players literally depend on their teammates for their livelihood—if not their lives—and that common purpose and connection is hard to relinquish:

  Your livelihood depends on them and you do everything with them. . . . You live with them for six weeks in the beginning, you go to work with them all during the year from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. 9 p.m., and you fly with them, and you travel with them, and then all of a sudden, it’s gone, that’s tough. . . . You play dominoes and you play cards and video games and go out and drink beer and eat hot dogs, you know, and go for a steak. . . . When we were playing, we would be with our teammates more than our wives. . . . I’ve missed that more than playing.31

  Often, in moments of high passion—especially after big wins—emotions flow. “When you see people win championships,” said Ray Lewis after winning the Super Bowl, “they do it based off love.” “We were ready to die for each other out there,” added his teammate Brendon Ayanbadejo.32 Players typically aren’t this emotional. They’re more likely to use the term “camaraderie” than “love,” or even “friendship.” There’s a subtle, yet important distinction in their choice of words, because players’ sentiments generally emanate from, and are directed toward, the football milieu and circumstances, not necessarily the people involved. That’s not to say that players don’t appreciate their comrades in arms, that they don’t feel a strong sense of masculine love. But they are much more apt to say they miss “the locker room” or “hanging out with the guys” than to refer to lost friendships or deep affective ties. Listen closely as Michael Arrington speaks of what he misses most about his NFL days:

  I think [it’s] the relationships that you have with the people in the locker room. You can work in a lot of different places, you can go in a lot of different environments, but there is no environment quite like the locker room and the camaraderie you have with those guys you bleed, sweat, cry, and celebrate with. A lot of those relationships you have for the rest of your life. So I think that is the biggest thing you walk away with. . . . Being around that environment . . . that is one of the biggest things I miss.33

  To be sure, Arrington thinks the relationships are important, and many last for years. But it’s the environment that promotes and sustains them. This doesn’t diminish the friendship that is certainly a vital component of camaraderie, but it underscores the situational nature of those friendships. They’re based on the locker room and its special culture.34 According to Tommy Jones, it’s a unique environment former players aren’t likely to duplicate because of its special demands:

  Being in the locker room, I know everybody misses that. . . . That camaraderie, you can’t replace that with nothing else, not even money, really. . . . We were in the trenches fighting. . . . That is all we did. We didn’t work a regular job. That is all we did all of our lives, and us, the select few to get to that level, that right there is a special thing that can’t be replaced.35

  Stanley Davis has similar recollections, especially of the spirit of “one for all, and all for one.” There’s a special bond that comes from feeling like you and your teammates are taking on the entire world, with everyone rooting against you.

  It’s the camaraderie, the brotherhood that you’re in, that gang mentality really. Us against the world. You know, you got my back and I got your back. . . . People ask me that all of the time: “Well, have you seen the guys? Are you still hanging out with the guys?” You never get to [hang out] like you used to do it. So it never lives up to it anymore. You see them every n
ow and then, but it’s not the whole gang in the locker room, where it’s all for one and one for all, like the fucking Musketeers.36

  But it’s more than just a siege mentality or bonding against a common threat. Hanging out with the guys was fun, in a way that’s off-limits to most grown men. Charles Nobles is up-front in his assessment: “Honestly, it was the camaraderie, playing with guys and just having that group of guys come together and just fun. It was fun.”37 For Walter Canady, a running back from the 1970s, the camaraderie meant he was able to be himself, exactly the man he wanted to be.

  That is what you miss the most. The big thing is you are around guys, and you know guys get criticized about this and that, and so people like to take shots at guys. In the locker room, you can be exactly who you want to be. You can be as ridiculous as you want to be, and nobody judges you on that. Guys tell their stories, or they do silly things, but nobody is judging them. So you miss your boys . . . when it is gone all of a sudden, it is a big hole in your life.38

  Canady is hinting at a bigger picture of the locker room culture. Accounts of NFL life—fiction, nonfiction, biography, exposé, or technical descriptions—are full of tales of locker room hijinks, trash talking, practical jokes, card games, dominoes, sexual escapades, and wild adventures. Nothing is too outrageous in this bastion of masculine solidarity. As Canady says, no one judges, and everybody’s got your back. It’s the player ethos.39